Summary: Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement by Cassidy R. Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière

• Science is one of the most powerful and influential human endeavors, but it is also one of the most gendered and unequal. In this book, Cassidy R. Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière provide a comprehensive and data-driven analysis of the global gender gap in science, showing how the structure of scientific labor and rewards systematically obstructs women’s career advancement.
• If you want to learn more about the causes and consequences of gender inequality in science, and what can be done to promote gender equity and diversity, you should read this book. You will find compelling evidence, insightful perspectives, and practical recommendations that will challenge and inspire you to make a difference in science and society.

Recommendation

Professors Cassidy R. Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière present a data-packed study of the global gender divide in science, highlighting barriers hampering women. Based on quantitative analysis of millions of published articles across various disciplines, the authors reveal that women are consistently shortchanged on funding and crucial accolades, including awards, authorship credits and citations. Armed with empirical data, Sugimoto and Larivière suggest several solutions and urge male scientists, journal editors, grant funders and the scientific community to include women more systematically.

Take-Aways

• Gender parity in scientific research does not guarantee gender equity.
• A global publishing gap prevails between men and women in science.
• A scientific journal byline is the main form of public credit for research; men’s names are likelier to appear in the high-status first or last slots.
• Women scientists are less likely to apply for grants and to receive them.
• Mobility can accelerate opportunities.
• To measure the impact and output of scientists, research citations are less biased than awards.
• Society tends to think of scientists as men.
• Overcoming gender inequities in science requires action from multiple parties.

Summary

Gender parity in scientific research does not guarantee gender equity.

Women scientists have achieved or surpassed parity with male scientists in terms of papers they publish and other measures of output and impact. Yet a “parity paradox” persists in which women in science often receive lower pay and less recognition for their work than men receive for theirs.

“Parity in science is a valuable goal but one that should not be pursued at the expense of equity.”

Gender inequity in science has origins stretching back centuries. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the work of pioneering women scientists such as paleontologist Mary Anning was overlooked and forgotten. By the late 19th century, exceptions had occurred – including physicist Hertha Ayrton, who earned awards and recognition, and who published in the leading journals of her era. Advances for women scientists came slowly. For example, the journal Nature did not change the slogan in its mission statement from “men of science” to “scientists” until the year 2000.

Women’s participation in science decreased in the 20th century when the sciences, formerly an amateur pursuit, became professionalized. That fueled the exclusion of women. In the early 20th century, a woman with a science degree might still find work only as an assistant.

When Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie visited the United States, her publicity presented her in a caregiving role, for instance, as someone seeking a cure for cancer, not as a scientist. Women often contributed to science while working with their husbands, whose names could appear on papers, while theirs often could not. In the early 1900s, Lillian Moller Gilbreth published on industrial engineering with her husband Frank Gilbreth (with whom she had a dozen children). Their publisher insisted on showing her byline as L.M. Gilbreth, without using her full name. When her husband died in 1924, engineering societies excluded Gilbreth, forcing her into industrial psychology.

An apocryphal story says that Edward Pickering, who became director of the Harvard Observatory in 1877, got fed up with his assistants, swore his housekeeper Williamina Paton Fleming, could do better, and hired her. Over the course of 30 years, she made a name for herself as a leading astronomer, spoke publicly and hired other women scientists, setting a trend in US observatories.

Yet, 20 years into her career of stellar service, the Observatory refused to give Fleming a raise – saying dismissively that she was making an excellent salary for a woman – and she is said to have “work[ed] herself to death.” In 1931, one of the scientists Fleming hired, Annie Jump Cannon, became the first woman to win the Henry Draper Medal for research in astrophysics, but a demeaning journalist portrayed her as housekeeping among the stars. In 1956, Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin became Harvard’s first female professor of astronomy, and eventually the first chair of its astronomy department, though it paid her less than it paid her male counterparts.

A global publishing gap prevails between men and women in science.

Men, on average, enter leadership roles earlier in their careers, and that has an impact on perpetuating inequity for years or decades to come. One manifestation of this issue is the gender gap that persists in publications and journals in nearly every country, with male scientists out-publishing women by significant margins across all scientific disciplines except health. Until countries reach gender parity in the production and fair attribution of research, their women scientists are unlikely to achieve equity. And if they reach parity because men leave for other countries or abandon the field, that result is not really due to equity.

A scientific journal byline is the main form of public credit for research; men’s names are likelier to appear in the high-status first or last slots.

Today, the dominant form of credit for scientific research is being bylined as an author of a scientific paper. Men are far more likely to be the sole author of scientific papers than women, though solo authorship is rare today even for men. Listing several coauthors on journal articles has become the norm, but women are often pushed aside. Because men tend to have more seniority and power, their names appear on more papers.

On collaborative papers, men tend to make authorship credit decisions without consultation more often than women do in a similar role. Women find themselves in proportionately more authorship disagreements than men, which likely harms their future collaborative opportunities. These self-reinforcing cycles perpetuate inequities.

“Our results suggest that both men and women acknowledge inequities in the distribution of authorship along gendered lines.”

In one persistent trend, theoretical work receives disproportionate credit over empirical work. Author lists too frequently omit women who often contribute essential research – including statistical analysis. When women do receive co-author credit, they appear only 25% of the time in the most prestigious place on the list – last (denoting senior team leaders). Men also dominate the first slot (sometimes junior scholars), the second most prestigious position. Women scientists can close this gap only when they lead the research and thus appear as corresponding authors in the last slot or receive roughly half of first author credits. When men are corresponding authors, they tend to credit other male authors higher in the pecking order than their contributions merit.

In scientific research, women tend to focus on experimentation and analysis, while males – even mid-list authors – tend to focus more on leadership-related activities, such as conceptualization and review. Regardless of how many members a research team has, women tend to perform most of the experimentation. They are 18% more likely than men to have worked directly on research experiments and contributed to data analysis. Lead women on research teams typically do more of the work than lead men.

Data on who contributes to scientific works offers a vital perspective in examining gender imbalances in research and output. Women frequently earn their place as journal article coauthors by conducting experiments, while men earn credit for designing research and obtaining funding. This tends to position women’s bylines mid-list, while men appear first and last more frequently. Women also are 6% more likely to write the first draft of a paper, and men are 9% more likely to edit it – further contributing to the power imbalance in science publishing. Lists of authors seldom reflect the scope of women’s contributions.

“Certain contributions are more lucrative, from the perspective of academic capital, and these are more likely to be associated with men.”

One of the more egregious attribution injustices against a female scientist occurred in the 1950s with the discovery of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA, but chemist Rosalind Franklin had published an earlier, more detailed and precise account, including photographs. Franklin’s work was hands-on, while Crick’s and Watson’s contributions were theoretical and built on her efforts. Franklin died before Watson and Crick received the Nobel. If she had lived, perhaps she might have shared the prize. However, science textbooks and common knowledge attribute the discovery of DNA to Crick and Watson. Few sources mention Franklin.

The number of citations a scientist’s papers and books accrue provides a reasonable way to measure his or her impact. Many researchers consider citations the currency of the scientific ecosystem and, if so, women suffer more impoverishment than men. Articles with at least one male author or one female author receive equal citations overall, as do papers with sole authors, regardless of gender. However, when women’s names appear in the two dominant positions on author lists, their papers receive fewer citations.

Journals should adopt policies requiring fair contribution statements. More than 120 journals have acted to enforce equitable credit by adopting a formal system, Project CRediT’s Contribution Roles Taxonomy. This system, the result of an effort launched in 2012 by Harvard and the Wellcome Trust, is designed to clarify women’s contributions.

Women scientists are less likely to apply for grants and to receive them.

Overall, women are less likely to apply for grant funding than men, and they tend to win smaller grants. Men’s average annual grant amounts are 30% higher than women’s ($220,000 compared to $170,000, with greater gaps in biomedicine, health and clinical medicine). Women are even with men in physics.

A comprehensive analysis of millions of American and Canadian papers and their links to funding reveals moderately higher levels of funding for women in just three fields: engineering, math and chemistry. Because only the strongest women thrive in these male-dominated arenas, they are the elite and that may be why they attract more funding relative to men.

“Women are more likely to be funded in fields where they account for a small percentage of researchers, such as engineering, physics, earth and space sciences and, to a lesser extent, mathematics.”

In total, however, trends indicate less funding for women scientists, and so less research by women, which leads them to publish fewer articles, which means winning fewer grants. These disparities stem, in part, from bias in favor of well-known scholars and prestigious institutions. This creates a disadvantage for women in a profession where government research grants are a vital lifeline, even in universities.

Mobility can accelerate opportunities.

As recently as the late 1800s, most prestigious Western universities did not grant degrees to women. Swiss and German institutions were the exception and drew women from the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere.

During World War II, the reverse happened: many female European scholars came to the United States to flee the conflict. Decades later, women scientists from Ethiopia, India and elsewhere followed.

“Historians of science have focused on the role that war plays as a catalyst in scientific mobility, as seen, for example in the large influx of scientists to the United States in the throes of World War II. Italian-born neurobiologist [and eventual Nobelist] Rita Levi-Montalcini, for example, left Italy in 1946 for Washington University for a one-semester research fellowship. She stayed for 20 years.”

Mobility is often critical to a scientist’s career. But women prove to be less mobile than men, especially as they age. Though it’s difficult to measure, young male and female researchers change locations at nearly identical rates, though men are somewhat more likely to undertake an international relocation. Over their careers, male scientists generally work in more countries than women.

To measure the impact and output of scientists, research citations are less biased than awards.

Women of high achievement in the sciences have remained largely invisible to the Nobel Committee, despite clear and at least equal contributions to efforts that led to their male collaborators’ Nobel Prizes, though Marie Curie’s two Nobels stand as an exception.

“Science is not a meritocracy…many factors…affect who gets to do science and who receives credit for it.”

Of the 714 Nobel Prizes awarded in the sciences between 1901 and 2021, only 25 went to women. When Donna Strickland, a University of Waterloo associate professor, won for physics in 2018, it had been 55 years since the previous female winner in that field. Just months before her Nobel, Wikipedia rejected Strickland’s application for a page on the grounds that she didn’t meet its “notability” standard.

Society tends to think of scientists as men.

In experiments, reviewers who assess papers with randomly assigned male or female bylines rate papers with male-sounding names significantly higher. In competition for jobs, reviewers show bias in assuming women won’t be as open to relocation as men. Hiring managers rate women lower than men with equal qualifications, and offer them less money. Despite equal pay efforts, women (especially mothers) in the sciences in the United Kingdom suffer up to a 24% gender pay gap versus men with similar credentials in the same roles.

“We find gendered disparities in funding, with women less likely to have received a grant…This leads to cycles of disparity: When women’s work is not funded, they produce less, thereby leading to lower rates of funding.”

Inequities in science throughout history have often outright denied women eligibility for patents and financial rewards. For example, Catharine Littlefield Greene was instrumental in inventing the cotton gin. Ann Harned Manning invented important agricultural tools. In both cases, incredible wealth followed these inventions, but neither Greene nor Manning received anything.

Marie Curie and Lillian Galbreth set high standards for achieving unparalleled science while raising children, but for most women, this dual role takes a toll on research output. Analysis of heterosexual marriages between scientists reveals that research output suffers among those whose marriages produce children, with women suffering most of the loss.

Overcoming gender inequities in science requires action from multiple parties.

Many parties have a role to play in improving the position of women in the sciences. Male scientists should seek female collaborators and support them in leadership roles. Lecturers should balance their curricula with more references to the work of women scientists. Universities should revisit their hiring and promotion practices. Funders should make research support and grants equally available to women and men. Publishers should audit their peer review processes for bias. Professional societies and other grantors should ensure that an equitable number of women receive their grants and invitations to speak at their events. And, no one should have to face sexual discrimination of any kind.

About the Authors

Professor Cassidy R. Sugimoto teaches at Georgia Tech and serves as the Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Public Policy. Vincent Larivière is a full professor of Information Science at the Université de Montréal and directs the Érudit journal platform.

Genres

Gender studies, Science studies, Scientometrics, Sociology of science, Feminist science, Science policy, Science education, Science communication, Science history, Science ethics.

Review

The book is a comprehensive and data-driven analysis of the global gender gap in science, based on various indicators of scientific production, labor, and reward. The authors use bibliometric methods to examine the differences between women and men in terms of publications, citations, funding, collaboration, mobility, and recognition.

They also provide qualitative insights from interviews and surveys with women scientists, as well as historical and sociological perspectives on the causes and consequences of gender inequality in science. The book reveals how the structure and culture of science systematically disadvantage women and hinder their career progression, despite some improvements in recent decades. The book also offers concrete recommendations for policy-makers, funders, institutions, and individual scientists to promote gender equity and diversity in science.

The book is a valuable and timely contribution to the literature on gender and science, as it provides a comprehensive and rigorous empirical assessment of the current state of affairs and the challenges ahead. The authors are well-known experts in the field of scientometrics, and they use a variety of data sources and methods to present a global and nuanced picture of the gender gap in science. The book is also engaging and accessible, as it combines quantitative evidence with qualitative stories and examples that illustrate the lived experiences and struggles of women scientists.

The book is not only descriptive, but also prescriptive, as it proposes actionable solutions and best practices for achieving gender equity and diversity in science. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding and addressing the gender gap in science, as well as for women scientists who seek inspiration and guidance for their own careers.